Diana Peterfreund: Under the Rose

“Back off, bozo,” I hissed at a bass who was bellowing his mantra at me. “Or I’ll make you a soprano. We’re not freshmen, and we aren’t interested.”

The Greek system at Eli is notoriously chill. We’ve got a few frats and sororities, but not many students join, and Panhellenic rush is practically imperceptible in the melee of other student activity groups. Secret societies are only for seniors, so freshmen looking to get their fix of “joinerism” invariably get sucked into the madness of Singing Group Rush.

Think secret societies are a lot like frats? Here’s the difference:

1) You join a secret society at the end of your junior year, after you’ve spent almost three years getting a taste for the college, defining your place in it, and deciding what kind of activities you want to take part in. It’s not like Rushes, where they trap freshmen into an activity commitment of four years or more before they’ve even unpacked.

2) There’s no Rush period for societies. They don’t pretend they’re crazy about you if they aren’t interested.

3) You usually don’t even know what society is interviewing you until the night they offer you membership. At least, I didn’t, though I was a special case (more on that later).

Just past the singers, a blessedly quiet trio was handing out pamphlets advertising a prayer group. I caught sight of another Digger in the group. “Jenny, where have you been?” I called. “Odile about went nuts.”

Jennifer Santos, a.k.a. Lucky in Rose & Grave parlance, looked at her companions and then back at me, her eyes wide. She came closer and spoke in a low voice. “What happened to ‘discretion,’ Amy?”

“What happened to rehearsal?” George replied, but Jenny, as usual, ignored him.

“Look, I had a prior commitment.”

Josh folded his arms. “We’re more important.” Subtext: Besides, you’re a senior and it’s time to put away childish things.

“No,” she said. “You’re not. I’ve been with these guys for three years.”

“You took an oath saying we’d come before everyone,” Josh argued.

Her eyes narrowed. “I’ve made a lot of promises. Some are more important than others.”

I stepped between them. “Okay, guys, let’s calm down. I’m sure Jenny’s memorized her part.”

She gave me a cool, clear gaze. “You bet I have.”

Just then, another member of Jenny’s group joined our tight little circle. The newcomer was tall, with blond hair that fell to his shoulders, and dark, slashing eyebrows. “Is there a problem, Jennifer?”

“No,” she said. “These guys are seniors, and they’re not interested in what we have to offer them.”

“Pity,” the young man said.

Josh held up his hand. “Whatever, dude. I’ve got my prophets, and you’ve got yours.”

The boy turned on him. “I would like to know what exactly it is you worship, Joshua Silver.”

“Same God as you, man.”

“Knowing what I do about your kind, I doubt that.”

This time, both Jenny and I put our hands on the shoulders of our respective friends and pulled them away from each other. The words coming out of Josh’s mouth were not exactly godly and beating up a classmate over religious differences would hardly help his political career. George jumped in to help me save Josh from himself.

“Jenny, see you later?” I called, as we dragged Josh away. She glared at me, as if I had no right to speak to her in front of her other friends. Boy, was I going to bring this up the next time the Diggirls got together. Oaths of secrecy were one thing, but Jenny took it all a step or two too far.

The ranks of student activity promoters thinned out toward the far end of the quad, and we squeezed into the English building and slipped into the lecture hall right as the carillon in the Hartford Tower chimed three o’clock.

Professor Branch was already at the front of the class, pontificating on his own brilliance and mastery of the field and checking out the cute young things who had come to worship him this semester. We found three seats together near the back of the room and sat. I scoped out the area around us for a stray syllabus, and a girl with dark curly hair seated next to the podium at the front of the room started arguing with the professor about one of the assignments.

He didn’t take too kindly to it.

George nudged me. “Check it out: Mara Taserati.”

One of our missing members, in the flesh. I watched the girl go head-to-head with the famous scholar and realized why the Diggers found her so attractive. Like most of the women that comprised my tap class—the first ever to include females—Mara was a power player. Ranked high in the academic and political strata of the student body, she fancied herself a young Ann Coulter. She hadn’t been on campus last semester, so though we’d been given word she’d accepted the Rose & Grave tap, she’d never been initiated into the Order.

“Did you know she’d be here?” I whispered back.

“No, I’m just really into Shakespeare. What do you think?” He held open the pocket of the oxford he wore over his T-shirt and flashed me a glimpse of glossy, black-edged paper. “Check it out, Boo.” Standing, he sauntered toward the front of the auditorium. George, being George, soon had the eye of every female in the joint. He reached the podium, swiped three copies of the syllabus, gave Professor Branch a little salute, and returned. He winked at me from behind his copper-rimmed glasses and passed me a copy.

“Wow, what a maneuver, George,” Josh said, with mock admiration. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone disrupt a lecture so thoroughly.”

“Keep watching.”

But nothing happened for the next forty-five minutes, aside from a truly illuminating lesson on the theory that, owing to his fictionality, spoiled college kid Hamlet was actually a more real person than any of the real college kids gracing Professor Branch’s lecture hall. Maybe after our uncles killed our dads and married our moms, we’d catch up. We were gathering our bags when I heard the gasp.

Mara Taserati was staring into her bag, her hand clamped over her mouth. When she didn’t make any further move, the other students shrugged her off. Josh and I, in unison, leaned back in our seats and waited while the room emptied out around us. George braced his hands behind his head and put his feet up on the row of chairs in front of him. Far below us, Mara reached her hand back into her bag and drew out a square white envelope, edged in glossy black and sealed with a dollop of black wax.

I knew what was in that envelope. Once upon a time, I’d received one just like it.

She raised her eyes to our row. George stood, slowly, and his infamous knowing smile took on a whole new meaning. “Welcome back, Mara,” he said in a voice that made me realize why Odile had given him a speaking part in these proceedings. “How was your trip?”

Even from twelve rows away, I could see her shiver.

I hereby confess:

There’s something rotten

in the state of Digger.

Is it possible to feel nostalgia for something that’s not over? The start of senior year at Eli seemed engineered to evoke that emotion at every opportunity. Special receptions, teas, parties, barbecues, meetings, lectures, symposiums, brunches—everything proclaimed “The best years of your life are coming to an end!”

Actually, my roommate, Lydia, had a different explanation. “They’re priming the pump for the alumni giving fund. Wait and see.”